Shere v. Moore

Summary

The Supreme Court of Florida denied Richard Earl Shere Jr.'s petition for habeas corpus relief challenging his death sentence. The court rejected claims of ineffective appellate counsel concerning prosecutorial religious references, the failure to raise proportionality and codefendant sentencing issues, and the failure to argue a mitigating circumstance, and held that a claim regarding incompetency at execution was not ripe. A partial dissent disagreed with the majority's treatment of the codefendant's life sentence and comparative culpability.

Holdings

1. Appellate counsel was not ineffective for failing to raise the claim because the defense failed to object in many instances and itself introduced religious belief into the proceedings; the record did not establish deficient performance.
2. Appellate counsel was not ineffective because the trial court properly determined that Shere's admission of prior criminal behavior negated the mitigating circumstance.
3. The competency-to-be-executed claim was not ripe for state court proceedings.
4. Appellate counsel was not ineffective for failing to argue that Demo's life sentence rendered Shere's death sentence disproportionate because Demo had been convicted of second-degree murder, and the different convictions established that Demo was less culpable than Shere for purposes of the majority's relative-culpability analysis.
5. In conducting proportionality review, the court considers the totality of the circumstances and, when multiple defendants participated in the killing, may consider relative culpability; under the majority's rule, that relative-culpability comparison applies only when the codefendant was convicted of the same degree of murder and was otherwise legally eligible for death.

Questions Presented

1. Whether appellate counsel was ineffective for failing to challenge prosecutorial religious references and biblical arguments during the penalty phase.
2. Whether appellate counsel was ineffective for failing to challenge the proportionality of Shere's death sentence in light of codefendant Demo's life sentence.
3. Whether appellate counsel was ineffective for failing to challenge the trial court's refusal to find the statutory mitigating circumstance of no significant prior criminal history.
4. Whether Shere's potential incompetence at the time of execution presented a ripe claim for state habeas relief.

Disposition

writ_denied